


Your Blood in my Veins

by Juventas



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Age Difference, Age Play, Alternate Universe - Victorian, Blood Drinking, Classical Music, Coming of Age, Complicated Relationships, Don't Like Don't Read, Emotional Manipulation, Found Family, Grooming, Historical Inaccuracy, Implied/Referenced Underage Sex, Interview with a Vampire AU, M/M, Orphan Keith (Voltron), Orphanage, Please understand before reading the tags, That the problematic elements of this fic are addressed, This AU is fucked up and we acknowledge that, Vampires
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-11
Updated: 2018-05-11
Packaged: 2019-05-05 03:23:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,957
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14608203
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Juventas/pseuds/Juventas
Summary: Keith retells the story of his life: from his childhood in an orphanage to the man who shaped his whole world.





	Your Blood in my Veins

**Author's Note:**

> Please understand that this is not how the author views Sheith as a pairing. Fiction is a place for us to explore ideas in a way that won't hurt anyone. Sometimes, stories are fucked up, but please note that the problematic and unhealthy aspects of this story are addressed. This is a fucked up AU. If it's not your cup of tea, please don't read it. 
> 
> Additional tags will be added for Part 2.

_Part I_

_My Fingers on Ivory - A Tainted Melody_

I can’t tell you how old I was when this all started.  I was young, a mortal boy who had been raised in an orphanage on the outskirts of a small town.  I can remember it as though I was there just yesterday, despite how long it’s been since the building was demolished.  It had been an old church, large enough to house boys from all across the country side. I had been there since I could remember.  I never knew my parents, if they really did ever exist. Back then, I had been convinced they didn’t, convinced that I had just appeared from nothingness into that place.  That God had left me there and forgotten me. But of course that was when I was young and naive. Of course I had parents somewhere in the world, but to this day I’ve never known who they were.  After a while, it didn’t matter to me anymore.

But regardless of how I came to be there, that orphanage was my home for years.  The caretaker—a woman with graying hair and a smile that could calm the most frightened child—was good to us, and the servants kept us well fed and bathed.  From what I’ve learned of orphanages in that time, ours was considerably kinder to its children than most. We had a yard out back that lead into the woods, a fireplace, and a grand piano.

God, did I love that piano.

I took it up very young, enchanted by the way it sounded when I ran my fingers over the keys.  They told me I was a natural, although I’m sure they were simply encouraging a young boy to do something other than run around outside and cause trouble for the neighbors.  The few servants who knew how to play would sit with me for hours and teach me. My fingers were clumsy for a long time, not understanding just how delicately the keys could be pressed, and just how beautifully you could make that piano sing.  But I learned and slowly I could play simple tunes on my own without their tutoring.

Although he claims there are other reasons, I believe my playing was the first thing that ever caught his attention.

He first came on a Sunday evening.

We had all been to church that day, our caretaker leading us in two neat lines into town to sit in the musty cathedral and listen to our priest bless the day and have us give thanks for being alive and healthy in such a time.  Much of the country was ill or falling to poverty, but we had a blessing over our town, and that we should thank God for our patron who kept us all well. I didn’t understand at the time what he meant when he said that. I assumed he meant an angel.  I was sorely incorrect.

“You play beautifully,” were the first words he said to me, standing in the doorway of the parlor where the piano was kept.  I didn’t recognize him. He was old enough to be my father, with dark hair that was combed back off his face. His skin was pale and perfect as chiseled ivory and yet somehow pliable, with no wrinkles and lines marring it as he smiled.  He was dressed more elegantly than anyone I'd seen before, in a black suit with a silver trim and cravat. He looked at me with two beautifully shining grey eyes, and I was enchanted by them. The light reflected from him in a way that reminded me of the moon, soft and beautiful.  Although I may have romanticized the memories of when we first met. I was a child in every sense, and had no idea of the intentions he had for me.

He asked my name and I told him it was Keith. He found it amusing for reasons I still don't understand. He crossed the room and sat in the armchair set in the corner.  

“Play something for me,” he said, and I didn't think twice about it.  I turned back to the piano and I played the most difficult piece I knew.  By my standards now, it may as well have been a scale, but back then it was something I thought was impressive. I did it with a flourish, trying my best to show off for this stranger who I had never even laid eyes on before. When I had finished, he didn't clap like our caregiver would.  Instead, he hummed, and I remember in that moment wanting nothing more than for him to have enjoyed it, to be impressed with me.

“If I brought you a piece to learn, could you?” he asked me.  I told him of course I could, that I could play anything he asked me to, and he seemed happy with my answer. He told me to practice for next time, and he was gone.

And I practiced.  Any downtime we had, I would play the piano.  I didn't know if that man was ever coming back, or if he had even been real to start with, but I suddenly had a chip on my shoulder. Whoever that man was would hear me play again, and he would applaud.

The next time he came, one of the servants came to collect me from my room.  It was late and we had already been put to bed for the night. I was dressed in a shirt and slacks that weren't mine and sent down to the parlor where he was sitting in that same armchair, a smile on his lips. I was hesitant to walk into the room.  He was intimidating, and there was something about him that I couldn't place. But there was also a magnetism that drew me to him and made my feet carry me forward. My young brain couldn't comprehend at the time the attraction I felt to this man. Back then, I suppose maybe it was a desire for attention, the fact that he seemed to have an interest in me fueling my young thoughts.  I sat down at the piano without exchanging a word with him, and I played. I had prepared a new piece in the time he'd been away, slightly more complicated than my last, but still simple enough for someone my age. I played it flawlessly, and when I had finished I whipped around on the bench to see if he finally would applaud me.

He didn't. Instead, he stood and crossed the room to the bench, towering above me as he looked down with a smile.  

“You've improved,” he told me, and I felt a surge of pride. I _had_ improved and he had noticed. My ego was dancing on my sleeve and I am sure it showed on my face because the man let out a laugh, not mocking in the slightest, but good natured and full. A laugh I would come to associate with real happiness from him.  “I brought you something.” He handed me a few sheets of old paper on which a new piece was written. “Will you learn that for me?”

“Will you clap?” I asked him, a petulant child with no sense of manners or tact. It was all I wanted then: applause from a man I suddenly had put too much stock in.  

“If you impress me, I will give you all the applause and adoration you could want.”

It was those words that planted the seeds of yearning so deeply inside me.  Seeds that he cultivated over years of visits, of new pieces to learn, new books to read, new clothes to wear, and applause for my achievements.  His visits were sporadic. Sometimes I’d only have to wait a few days to see him. Other times, it’d be over a month. But he became a constant in my life.  My skill on the piano improved dramatically thanks to his encouragement and the music teacher he hired for me. I was becoming isolated from the other boys, too focused on learning and reading far past their level.  It wasn’t that we weren’t educated at the orphanage, but for some reason my education far exceeded anyone else’s.

I learned his name when I was twelve.  It had never struck me that I didn’t know it until I overheard the servants speaking to each other, their voices kept hushed and words spoken in a rush.  His name was Shirogane. That held no real significance for me at the time, never having heard it before. Their words were muffled behind the kitchen door I was listening through, but I was sure I heard my own name spoken as well.  And then, as children without parents and homes of their own often do, I imagined that they were saying that Shirogane was going to take me home.

A new yearning had developed inside me.  His applause was no longer enough to satisfy my need from him.  I wanted a home. I wanted to be taken away from this orphanage and given my own house, my own piano, my own father.  I deluded myself into genuinely believing that those were his intentions for me, that he was grooming me into a fine young gentleman until I was prepared enough to be taken into his life.  A dangerous belief for a child who had never had anyone even vaguely resembling a parent before. I still to this day resent the fact that he let me believe it for so long. I was not subtle, and he cannot pretend that he didn’t know what I wanted of him.  

“Is it beautiful where you live?” I asked him one evening, my fingers moving across the keys by memory and my thoughts muddled with hopeful ideas.  He was in his armchair listening to me play as he always was when he visited. He hadn’t said much to me that night, a simple hello and inquiry as to whether or not I had practiced for him.  I had, of course. It was what I spent almost all my days doing. “Do you have a big house? A garden? Will you ever let me see it?”

Shirogane, or _Shiro_ as I had come to know him, let out a breath of laughter that made the corners of my own lips twitch up into a grin.  “Is that where you imagine me to live?”

“Yes,” I answered without hesitance, having already created an image of his life outside of these visits in my head.  An image that I so often placed myself into. I was happy there in our home with a father who loved me more than anything else in the world.  “A mansion with rooms to spare and gardens so beautiful that people would come just to see it. Am I right?”

“Perhaps you are,” he said, as usual not giving me any sort of confirmation or denial.  I was constantly suspended in not knowing what was right or wrong, what was true or make-believe.  He let me build up these delusions until they were what I truly thought was reality.

And it frustrated me beyond belief.  Not the uncertainty, because at that age I had not realized that he never gave me a real answer, but the simple fact that after each visit he would leave.  He would step out the front door into the night, and I would watch him go until he had faded into the darkness, always leaving me behind in that orphanage, where I’d curl up into my bed and scream into my pillow.  I was so alone there when he was gone. I had no one, not even the other boys to keep me company anymore. I felt abandoned by someone who owed me nothing but gave me everything except what I truly wanted.

My isolation only became worse when I was moved from the communal bedroom I had shared with about five other boys into my own room.  It was an abrupt move around when I turned fourteen, our caretaker telling me to collect what things I had and get settled in the new bedroom they’d cleared just for me.  I didn’t understand why, but who was I to question it? I was getting a room to myself which any of us would have fought tooth and nail for. It was still small as far as bedrooms go, but it was something. I would hole myself up in it and read my books or try on the clothes that Shiro had brought me to wear while I played for him.  

He spoiled me with gifts each time he came: clothes that were much too elegant for my social class, toys from other countries, and foods so delicious I was convinced they couldn’t be real.  Even more than he enjoyed my playing the piano, Shiro seemed to enjoy watching me open his gifts. He would sit in his chair while I acted like Christmas morning had come early. “You like them, my child?” he’d ask, the name driving home my belief that he really was going to take me one day.  And like the sadistic bastard I know him now to be, he let me smile back at him and nod and tell him how happy I was. My life was being molded to his liking: what I wore, how I acted, who I talked to. Even my new bedroom had been a gift from him, as he preferred me away from the other boys. I had no concept of it, simply reveling in the fact that I was special. I didn’t even realize how separately I existed from the other boys in the orphanage until one of them poked a hole in my solitary existence.  

I hate to say it, but I cannot even remember that boy’s name now.  It has been so long since I have even thought of him. But he was something else.  He was new to the orphanage at fifteen after losing his parents to sickness, educated from his years in a proper school, and unknowing of the walls Shiro had built around me.  If he had not come in a time that Shiro had been absent for over a month, I probably wouldn’t have paid him any attention. But I was lonely and there he was. I’m downplaying what it really was but to be honest I can’t fully remember the feelings I had for this boy.  He was very special to me and I spent a lot of time with him in Shiro’s absence. He seemed interested in me as well, dragging me along on adventures into the woods outside and telling me all sorts of stories of where he came from. He shared more with me in a day spent together than Shiro had in the years I’d known him.  And it felt nice. As much as I longed for Shiro to come again, I was distracted from my loneliness. I could forget for moments that I was being left behind there.

Shiro would still come to visit, and just as always I would play him what I had learned since I last saw him.  I would sit on his lap and rest my head on his shoulder while he showed me what he had brought for me. I felt incredibly safe with him.  He hadn’t said it aloud but I knew that Shiro loved me. I was his child to spoil and care for, or so I believed. So he let me believe.

I didn’t tell him about my friend.  I don’t really know why I didn’t. I suppose it was for the same reason any child keeps secrets from their parents.  My friend was precious to me, and for some reason, I felt that Shiro would take him away. I felt like I was betraying some trust by being close to someone else, and that feeling only grew worse when I realized that maybe I wanted something more with this boy.  I couldn’t explain what, I was too naive to know, but I had secret thoughts of touching his hands, of pressing my lips against his.

But good things could only last so long.  I’ve learned that lesson well enough by now to wonder how I hadn’t seen the end drawing near back then.  But I suppose at fifteen, I hadn’t lived long enough to possibly see what was coming.

We had been playing out in the woods.  Innocently playing, mind you. Like children did. We were chasing squirrels, throwing rocks, and playing hide and seek for most of the day.  I was a mess by the evening. My knees were scraped and my clothes were covered in dirt, but I was happy. I was so unadulteratedly happy. That boy had made me feel at home in the orphanage for the first time in my life.  But when we reached the back doors of the orphanage after the sun had gone down, we were greeted by our caretaker looking distraught.

I was ushered inside, leaving my friend alone on the back steps, and practically shoved into the parlor.  I can remember my blood running cold. There he sat, after weeks of nothing, looking at me with an expression I’d never seen on his face before.  It wasn’t disappointment. No, it was worse. It was anger and a possessiveness that forced my head down. I couldn’t bare to see him look at me like that.  I felt like I had done something horribly wrong but I had no idea what. I tried brushing the dirt off my pants, but at that point I was too much of a mess for it to help.  

“I’m sorry, sir,” I said before Shiro had even spoken.  He didn’t have to speak for me to know I should be apologizing despite not knowing what I was really sorry for.  I hadn’t known he was coming. How could I have? “May I go change into something more proper?”

“You’ve kept me waiting this long,” Shiro said back, and I remember his tone forcing my lips closed to hold back a frightened whimper.  “I supposed if it means you won’t look like such a commoner’s child, I can wait a bit longer.”

I bathed and changed into Shiro’s favorite of my suits, taking more time than I should have.  I was afraid to go back. I didn’t want to see him look so angrily at me again. But eventually I had to, and I walked back as though heading to my own funeral.  I cracked open the door to the parlor and stepped inside, keeping my eyes on the floor as I crossed to the piano and sat down at the bench. My hands were shaking violently.  I placed my fingers atop the keys, and I started to play. Wrong note after wrong note poured from the piano, and I felt tears burning in my eyes.

“Come here.”  I stood up and turned around in time to see Shiro patting his thigh, and I knew he meant for me to come sit.  I kept my eyes lowered as I settled on his lap. “Where did you go today? I was waiting for you.”

I apologized again.  “I’m sorry. I got distracted.”

Shiro’s face nuzzled against my neck and a gasp escaped my lips.  The touch was shockingly intimate, something I had never felt before.  I could feel him breathing me in and his presence chilled me to my core.  “Were you alone?” he asked, his breath like ice against my skin. I shivered and nodded quickly, terrified of admitting the truth to him.  But it was no use. “I don’t like it when you lie to me.”

Fear forced me off his lap and onto the floor.  I backed away from him, starting to get angry myself.  “Why did you ask if you knew?” I shouted at him, unable to keep all my emotions hidden.  I was confused. What had I done? Why was he acting like this now?

Shiro just watched me with nothing more than a shake of his head and a sigh.  “I wanted to know if I could trust you. But you lied to me.” Another sigh. “You’re too young…”

“Too young for what?” I yelled, my voice ripping from my throat.  I’m sure that I woke half the orphanage, but I was distraught. He was looking at me like I was letting him down, something I hadn’t realized until that moment I never wanted to do.  But still, my anger was getting the better of me. Everything felt like it was crashing down on top of me as he sat there watching my tantrum. “What do you want from me? You just come to listen to me play and leave me here alone!”

Shiro’s face showed his exasperation clearly, and it could not have been more obvious that my words hadn’t found their mark.  “Calm down… There is no need to get so frisky.” He dismissed me without so much as a thought for the words I was screaming at him, which only made me want to scream more.  I wanted to run away from him, to wail into my pillow upstairs, to draw back my fist and beat it while imagining his face on it. And I almost did, before his next words cut through my thoughts.  

“Did you miss me, Keith?”

The question was unfair.  Of course I had missed him.  I had cried alone in my bed wishing for him to come back.  I had questioned the servants and caregiver about when I would see him next.  I had just screamed at him about how he left me alone there. I hadn’t just missed him, I had _longed_ for him in a way that was entirely unlike someone would long for their father.  He made me feel special, made me feel adored and pampered and _good_ when he was around. But I hadn’t understood what my feelings for him were becoming.  How could I? I was a child.

And so I nodded again.  

“Yet you weren’t even here when I came to visit you.  You’ve hurt me immensely, my beloved.”

 _Beloved_ .  That word made my chest ache and my hands feel numb.  I felt like I could have floated onto the ceiling and simultaneously sank into the floor from the words that preceded it. I hurt him.  I _hurt_ him.  I had never felt more ashamed in my life.  Or at least, I hadn’t until he spoke again.

“I think you care more about this friend of yours than about me.  Do you want me to leave?”

My eyes widened as my head whipped up to look at him and tears finally spilled over onto my cheeks.  I was convinced that he was going to walk out right then and there. My breath was coming too short and my vision was blurred from lightheadedness and tears.  I felt as though the room was collapsing around me and my life was crumbling with it. "I don’t want that!” I yelled, my voice broken into shards as it tore through my throat.  “I even practiced for you! I just got distracted with him!”

I didn’t think it would be possible for things to get worse, but that was because I didn’t yet know Shiro.

“You like this boy?  Do you want to give him kisses?” he asked, his tone innocent but the weight of the words forced my head down again.

“Why do you care about that?” I asked instead of answering him because how could I possibly answer?  Just say honestly that, yes, I wanted to kiss him very much? That I wanted to hold his hands and let him play with my hair and teach him the piano?  I couldn’t say that but I didn’t know why.

“I care about everything when it comes to you, my beloved.”

“Only when it pleases you,” I accused before I could bite my tongue. “Not when you leave me here alone.”

“I do what I do to protect you and to give you the best this world can offer,” Shiro barked.  I winced at the sudden volume, but didn’t retract from my anger.

“And yet you keep leaving me!  I have no one here, I am kept separate from the others, and you make me feel guilty about making a friend!”

Shiro stood up and I took a step back, unable to stand my ground when his presence suddenly felt so much more intimidating.  I barely reached his shoulder, and I found it impossible to force my head up to look him in the eye.

“He doesn’t want you as a friend,” he spat, eyes thin and deadly fierce.  “He wants to touch you and kiss you and own you! How can you be so blind?”

“Why can’t he?” I yelled back, and immediately wished I hadn’t.  I may as well have slapped him, the look of shock and hurt on his face making my soul ache.  I loathed myself for my outburst and could feel my anger starting to break down, replaced by dread.

“If that’s what you want,” Shiro whispered.  “To belong to someone else…”

I could not hold onto my anger any longer.  I rushed forward to wrap my arms around his middle, burying my face into his chest, and sobbed. I sobbed as hard as I did into my pillow on nights he left me alone, terrified that if I let go he would leave me and never come back.  I heard through my sobbing him asking me what was wrong, and I began begging for his forgiveness. I can’t even recount what I said, I was too far gone by that point. I pleaded for him to stay. I pleaded for him to take me with him, away from that boy and the orphanage and everything I knew.  I pleaded for Shiro to have me entirely for himself, to have me however he wanted.

Shiro said I didn’t know what I was asking for.  And he was right, I had no idea.

Only when I asked if he would leave me for good once I was old enough to be thrown from the orphanage did he pull back from me.  I didn’t have time to see his expression nor could I have predicted what he was about to do, but a moment later there were lips pressed against mine, and I felt the world shatter around me.  It was wet from my tears and Shiro’s lips were cold, but it was such a loving kiss. I felt my whole body ignite in a way I hadn’t ever experienced before. I was like fire against his ice and it seared my lips in way that made me moan in my chest.

“How can you ask such a thing?” he said, pulling away from our kiss and looking at me as though he saw the universe in my eyes.  “You really don’t understand how deep my affection is for you?” I hadn’t recovered in the slightest, my mind still reeling and trying desperately to catch up with what he was saying to me.  I mumbled something about how he had left me so many times, but Shiro shook his head. “I want to claim you. I want to own you, Keith. Entirely. I want you to live with me, live _for_ me.  But it is more complicated than just that because of what I am.”

“What are you?” I asked, unaware of just how pressing that question was.

Shiro laughed, but it was humorless and sad.  “A monster.”

I shook my head.  My anger at him had dissipated entirely, replaced by a reverence that distorted my view of what he was asking of me.  All I had heard was that he wanted me. Wanted me to live with him. That he had deep affection for me. That was all I had wanted from him for _years_.  I would have done anything to hear him say that.  If it meant casting aside the one friend I had and isolating myself from everyone until he was ready to take me, then so be it.  

“You’re not a monster.  You can’t be. You’re my beloved.”

Shiro’s hand cupped my chin and pulled my face up to his.  I thought for a moment he was going to kiss me again and I leaned in for it, but instead he bared his teeth.  Two sharp fangs hung past his lower lip, stark white and terrifying. I jumped back, unable to help myself, and landed hard on my butt, looking up at him in awe and wonder instead of fear like I should have felt.  

“See?” he laughed, kneeling and offering a hand to me to help me up again.  “But don’t be afraid, my beloved. I would never hurt you.”

“Then why do you want me?” I asked, too excited.

“Because you are perfect for me,” he answered.  My heart skipped beats in my chest. _Perfect_.  He thought I was perfect.  I could have broken down and wept again from just how happy I was.  I would have given him my life right then and there if it pleased him.  “I have waited for centuries for someone like you to be born.”

“So why not take me now?” I practically begged, moving close again.  “You could have me all for yourself.”

Shiro’s face had softened, all trace of his anger gone, and he reached to brush my hair behind my ear.  I closed my eyes as he did. Even after he’d shouted at me, after he threatened to leave me, I still felt safer under his touch than I did anywhere else in the world.  I thought perhaps he would lean in right then and there, nuzzle my neck again, brush his lips against my skin, and bite me. I even let my head tilt to expose myself to him.  But he didn’t. Instead, he withdrew his hand from my hair and tapped my nose with one thin finger.

“You need to finish your education first,” he said.  I opened my eyes and looked back at him with a pout, suddenly a child again whose parent was withholding a treat for the sake of schoolwork.  Shiro laughed and leaned in to press a kiss against my rosy cheek. “And you are still too young.”

“But I want to stay with you,” I insisted. I was deluded by my fantasies of him and the yearning for a home and father I had felt my entire life.  His admittance of his desires for me had not changed my want for a parent, and he was still the same Shiro in my eyes. He could be my father and my beloved.  I did not know the implications of such thoughts.

Shiro was smiling at me, tenderly and lovingly, and I was sated by it enough to momentarily quell my childish want.  Although at the time I did not agree that I was too young, if Shiro wanted me to wait, then I would. Knowing what I do now, I would have been furious with him if he had changed me then.  I was too young for everything he was doing to me, but especially for that. I suppose I am thankful to him for making me wait.

I asked him if he would still like to hear me play the piano, and he said he would like that very much.  We rose off the floor, Shiro settling back into his armchair in the corner as I sat down on the bench. I played for him as I always would, with a flourish and showmanship meant to impress.  He listened, and when I finished, he clapped for me.

 

* * *

 

_Part II_

_Swallowed Innocence_

To say I had an obsessive personality would be an understatement.  I was not just obsessed with the idea of Shiro, he had become my entire life.  Before, he had been a constant. He had been an elusive father figure whose attention and approval I desperately sought.  But he became more than that. He was everything to me: who I wanted to be and be with, my caregiver and father, a love so precious that it made me ache when he would kiss me goodbye.  He was my teacher and my mentor, my protection and home. No one else in the world mattered to me anymore. I would cast them all aside if it meant that Shiro would keep me as his own. And I did.  I never spoke to that boy again after that day. He had become ruined, the reason my love almost left me. The servants no longer spoke to me when they would come to bring me food or take me to bathe.  Our caregiver would no longer look me in the eye. But it didn’t matter to me. I needed no one else when I had him.

I used my time alone to plunge myself deeper into my studies.  I read countless books and old texts, learned languages and new pieces on the piano.  Shiro would bring me more each time he came, as well as clothes and treats and sweet words about how proud he was of me.  He spoiled me rotten with his gifts. I came to expect them each visit and he never failed to deliver. I would only wear the fine clothes he brought, discarding the clothes provided to us as garbage not even worth passing on to the other children.  I acted far above my social class because I felt I had the right to more. My father was nobility, so therefore I was as well. Even if I was still stuck in that orphanage.

Shiro came more and more often to visit.  We would hole ourselves up in the parlor and sit side by side on the bench as I played for him.  He would close his eyes and listen, one hand on his knee while the other rested on my back. When I would finish he would lean in to whisper sweet words in my ears and press fleeting kisses to my cheek.  I would glow under the praise, addicted to it and never fully sated. I was not frightened of what he was, rather I was fascinated by it. I had no fear that he would ever hurt me because he loved me. He called me his precious child, his beloved, his little one.  I was so in love with him then. I was so in love with him for a long time.

The books he brought me began to change from historical texts to stories.  Romances between forbidden lovers and tales of men who stalked the night to feed of those still wandering in the streets.  The latter was always of more interest to me. Those men were described as having long fangs and pale skin and I felt a kinship with them as well as an allure. They said those men drank the blood of virgins, pure and innocent as the dawn they couldn’t face.  Tales of that kind were much less common in those days than they are now, and I had a growing curiosity and craving for the taste of blood on my tongue.

That innocent curiosity is what drove me to sneak down to the kitchen one night when the rest of the orphanage was asleep.  I stole a knife from the cupboard and used it to slice open my thumb. I whimpered at the pain but stared wide eyed as blood began to trickle from the wound and down my hand, dripping onto the floor.  I opened my mouth and covered the cut with my lips. It tasted like rusty water and dirt. I cannot say I enjoyed it but it still gave me a thrill. I licked the blood from my hand, letting it dribble down my chin and onto my nightshirt.  I wondered if this is what Shiro tasted when he fed. I wondered if he really did drink blood like the men in my storybooks.

“What is the matter, my love?” Shiro asked the next time he visited.  My fingers all sported bandages. I had snuck down to the kitchen to cut and drink from myself every night that week.  My playing had suffered for it as it was hard to properly move my fingers across the keys. Shiro didn’t seem mad as he asked me to come sit with him in his armchair.  I crossed from the bench to sit on his lap and he took my hand in his own. He observed it with a strange look on his face. I had never seen hunger etched so deeply into his features before.

“I wanted to taste,” was all I gave as an explanation.  

His expression darkened and he raised my hand to his lips.  For a moment I thought he might bite me. Instead he pressed a kiss to the wrappings, his eyes closed.  But I could feel his body tremble beneath me. I did not know then how much the thought of me drinking my own blood aroused him.  “Please don’t hurt yourself this way. When the time comes, you will be able to taste as much as your heart desires.”

I began to peel off the bandages from my left hand, the cuts there the most recent and least healed of all of them.  “Would you like a taste?” I asked, innocent to the weight the question carried.

Shiro’s voice was weak as he answered.  “You’re so kind, my love. It is such a generous offer.”  To tempt him more, I began to pick at a cut until it reopened and blood began to drip from it again.  “Keith!” he reprimanded, but raised my finger to his lips regardless.

It was the first time he tasted me and I will never forget the sound that he made: a moan so deep in his chest that I could feel it reverberate in him.  His body seemed to come alive as his tongue traced over the wound and I felt a shiver crawl up my spine. It was more intimate than when he kissed my lips.  He was drinking in a part of me and I was so willingly giving it to him.

“Delicious,” he breathed against my skin, his tongue running once more over the cut before he pressed a kiss to it.  He kissed across each of my fingers and down to the palm of my hand, whispering sweet words of how wonderful I was. He kissed his way to my wrist where he paused, breathing in the scent of my skin and licking me again.  I found myself panting and staring at his face. The way he touched me was so gentle and, in my mind, pure. His teeth scraped my skin, too lightly to break the surface, and I whined and squirmed in his lap. I was overwhelmed and aroused by his touches even though his teeth were sharp and stung.  He pressed one last kiss to my wrist before pulling back. “I’m sorry, my love,” he apologized as though I was upset about what he was doing. “You are too tempting.”

I enjoyed hearing that.  In my mind it meant that Shiro was longing for me too.  I liked being able to make him feel that way, to make him want me so badly he could hardly control himself.  And so I decided to push him more. I squirmed again in his lap and looked up at him with as much innocence as my young face could muster.  “You like me because I’m pure, don’t you?” I asked, quoting a line from one of the romance novels he’d given me to read. “Because no one else has ever tasted me before?”

That seemed to find its mark, because Shiro forcibly closed his eyes and took a deep breath.  I grinned to myself, loving the responses I was able to draw out of him. He had been so stoic most of my childhood that it was enchanting to see his face come alive.  I had hoped his cheeks would redden the same way mine did when he kissed them, but he remained pale as ever.

“What makes you think that,” he said with both amusement and strain in his voice.  “Clever little thing.”

I didn’t answer him.  Instead I moved, turning around to straddle his lap with my knees pressing into the seat cushion on either side of him.  I placed a hand on his chest for leverage and leaned into him, burying my face into his neck and breathing him in the same way he had with me.  He smelt of perfume and the cold, and I closed my eyes for a moment. It smelt like home. Shiro was taking collected breaths over my shoulder.

“Has anyone tasted you before?” I asked, nuzzling against his icy skin and opening my mouth to pretend to take a bite from him.  

He sighed and nodded.  “A long time ago,” he whispered, more willing then to give me real answers to my questions.  “That is how you become what I am.”

I pouted at that, but it was teasing.  I was too enthralled by this game of ours to care about someone drinking from him a long time ago.  “Not fair,” I whined. “I wanted to be the first.”

“You’ll be the first to taste me as a vampire,” he assured me.  The word made me retract from him, puffing out my cheeks as I tried to keep the grin off of my face.  My storybooks called those men I found so alluring vampires as well. I was so pleased to hear him say that word aloud.  “What is it, little one?” he asked.

“You had called yourself a monster,” I reminded him.  “But vampires are very beautiful, not monsters.”

“Vampires are natural killers, my love.”

“So are humans.  They’re cruel,” I retorted.  I had read enough history of the world to know this for a fact.  Human men waged wars and sought power and glory all for themselves.  The vampires in my stories were more elegant and more sophisticated than mortal men.  Perhaps it was my isolation from the rest of the world that had distorted my view of humanity, but even at sixteen I had already learned to look down on it.  

Shiro looked at me as though I was something peculiar, a smile across his lips and consideration in his eyes.  “You have such a particular way of thinking. I adore it.” My chest swelled, and I couldn’t keep my pride hidden.  “I see that you were very well lectured on it. Beautiful.” He raised a hand to push my hair behind my ear and ran a finger down my jaw.  I naturally tipped my head back for him and his finger continued down my neck. “I would like to think we are above their cruelty, but I am not too sure.”

“Are _you_?” I asked.

“What do you think?”

I thought for a moment.  I thought of him sitting in his armchair with a smile on his face as I opened his gifts.  I thought of the sweet words he’d say to me when I played well for him. I thought of the kisses he’d give me and the gentle way he’d touch me.  Those fond memories were enough to make me forget the poor ones, to forget how harsh he had been with me or how terrible he’d made me feel. I could only picture his smiling face.

I shook my head.  “You prefer sitting and listening to the piano.”

Shiro smiled and cupped my cheek as he pressed a kiss to my lips.  “You’re right, my love.” He kissed me again and I beamed. “Now, it’s late.  I am going to take you up to bed. I’ve never seen your room before, can you show me?”

“Yes,” I answered immediately, testing my luck and pressing my own kiss to his lips.  I slid off his lap before I could see his reaction and headed towards the door out of the parlor.  I turned back once I reached it and held my hand out, wanting nothing more than to hold his as we walked upstairs together.  He indulged me and I laced our fingers together as I opened the door. “I am the only one who doesn’t have to share a room,” I explained, although he already knew.  We reached it and I opened the door to let him inside. It was small and overcrowded. I barely had empty floor space as most of it was covered in books and trunks full of clothes, all gifts from him.  I hadn’t realized just how cramped it was until he was standing in it with me.

“Do you like having your own room?” he asked as he went to sit on my bed.  Perhaps I should have felt more anxious with him there but I knew no discomfort when it came to Shiro.  I crossed and sat down on his lap without thinking anything of it.

“Sometimes,” I answered.  He put his arms around my waist and held me, burying his face into my shoulder.  I grinned and continued. “I don’t understand why they keep me separate from the other boys.”

Shiro hummed and pressed a kiss to my skin just where my neck extruded from my shirt collar.  I let my head fall to the side so that he could have unimpeded access to it. “It’s my fault,” he admitted.  He kissed my skin again and I sighed, melting back into him. It felt so nice. It’s a truly incredible feeling, to believe so genuinely that the person you love with your entire heart and soul loves you back just as strongly.  “I didn’t want anyone else touching you. You are not like them. You’re special.”

He must have known how much I glowed under praise like that.  It probably wasn’t hard to figure out what exactly to say to make me feel that incredibly happy.  I showed it plainly on my face, and what parentless child doesn’t want, not only approval, but adoration from a father.  “I stopped seeing that boy,” I told him as if to show off how well I could listen to him, how well I obeyed. “I wouldn’t let him speak to me.”

There was a moment of silence.  I have no idea what Shiro was thinking and I almost turned around to question why he had paused, but he ruffled my hair before I could and let out a small laugh.  “That makes me very happy to hear, my beloved.” I was on my back before I knew it, my bed creaking under the extra weight of another man in it. I didn’t notice his hand slipping beneath my shirt, too distracted by his lips as they explored my cheeks, my jaw, my neck.  Each touch of his skin was like ice and yet somehow set me ablaze. Each word from his mouth was sweet as wine, and just as intoxicating. “Let me show you my appreciation.”

And I let him.  His hand caressed my chest and down my stomach, his lips leaving a trail of marks down my neck.  He asked me if it was too much and I shook my head frantically. It felt good. No one had ever touched me that way before, not even him.  He knew just where to touch and I liked that it was him doing it. I was trembling and panting, aroused and overwhelmed by him. He told me I was beautiful as he took my shirt off.  I flushed at his words, but I didn’t try to hide myself from him. I wanted him to see all of me. I wanted to give myself to him entirely.

“I can’t wait for you to live with me,” he breathed, and it sounded like an afterthought, like the words had just slipped out without any real purpose.  But, God, did they make me ache. Finally, _finally_ , after years of making me wait, tormented over the fact that I never knew where exactly this was all going, he said _that_.  I was going to live with him.  My delusion wasn’t a delusion anymore, it was reality.  That big house, that garden, my own grand piano, and my own father were real and going to be mine soon.  I wanted it so badly. I didn’t want to wait. I had been waiting my whole life.

I whined, unable to keep the sound inside myself.  “You say you can’t wait,” I panted, trying to get my eyes to stay open but his touches were too overwhelming.  “Yet you keep making us wait longer. Shiro, please.” I whined again, my fingers tangling into his hair as his lips found their way down my chest.  “I want _—_ ”

“Only a bit longer,” Shiro promised to quiet me.  “Once you're a bit older.” If the words didn't, his lips finding my nipple certainly did.  He closed them around it and sucked, and I let out an embarrassingly loud moan. But I was not quite passed my whining.  Of all the thing Shiro had taught me, patience was not one of them.

“I'm not old enough for you to take,” I panted, gripping his hair to anchor myself from slipping away into the oblivion he was dragging me to.  “But old enough for you to defile?”

I regretted my words instantly because Shiro stopped what he was doing to look at me.  I couldn’t read his expression, but fear blossomed in my chest regardless. I was constantly in fear when I spoke like that to him.  I was scared he would stop touching me, stop treating me so kindly, or leave me entirely. I felt like I should never question him in anything.  And yet I still did. Perhaps it was because somehow I had convinced myself that no matter what I said, no matter how scared I was, he wouldn’t really leave.  That belief was only hardened when he didn’t pull away. “You think I’m defiling you, my love?” he asked, blinking at me slowly.

I should have answered yes.  If I was still too young to be turned then I was still too young for him to touch the way he was.  I know that now. But at the time, my age did not play as big a factor as the God I still believed in.  I asked him if it was impure, if it was a sin for him to be doing this to me. We were not married and I had heard the whispers of the servants as well as the preaching of our pastor condemning even the slightest touches of those out of wedlock.  But Shiro was quick to tell me otherwise.

“If you are with someone you love, it is not impure,” he assured me, kissing my lips and quieting my protests.  “Do not listen to servants so far beneath you. I just want to make you feel good like you deserve to feel.”

He thought I deserved to feel good, so who was I to deny him giving me that pleasure.  I told him I’d like him to keep touching me, that I liked it too and wanted more. He spread my legs to settle between them, returning to kissing and sucking at my chest.  His teeth bluntly scraped over my sensitive nipple and I groaned. I let him have his way entirely with me. He told me I could tell him to stop but we both knew I never would.  His lips began trailing down my belly, leaving a trail of pink, flushed skin in his wake. He told me that he would make me feel so good that I could not even remember my own name.  I was getting to that point already, so aroused and overwhelmed by him that I couldn’t think straight. I can remember I was making noise, although whether it was words or simple gasps and moans, I cannot recall.  It was enough noise for someone to come to the door to ask if I was okay. Their voice came muffled through the door, but Shiro ignored it. He reached up to cover my mouth with a hand while the other began unfastening my belt.

I hate to spare you the details of what we did that night, but if I am honest with you I don’t remember much of it.  I was much too far gone from him touching me in ways I’d never even touched myself. He had me out of my pants before I had noticed he was taking them off, and the cold wetness of his mouth engulfed me.  He tells me I screamed, that I was so loud he had to press two fingers into my mouth to try and quiet me, but it was no use. I kept screaming, enthralled by the foreign pleasure, and he loved hearing it.  He didn’t linger long before moving down lower, his tongue touching places so unknown even to me that I felt as though I would die from the intrusion. I had no sense left in me, too consumed with feeling every touch he gave me.   I did not notice that he too was losing himself, until a sudden sharp pain shot through me from my groin, and I shrieked.

It was the first time he fed from me.  While it was happening, I had no clue that was what he was doing.  All I knew was pain and strange bolts of pleasure that hurt in their intensity.  I tried kicking him away, desperate to stop the pain, but he held me firmly in place until he had finished.  He acted as though nothing had happened, and returned to my length to continue pleasuring me. I was crying, I do remember that much.  Crying hard enough that eventually Shiro pull off of me and moved up so that we were on a level again. He brushed my hair from my face and asked me again if I wanted to stop.  I shook my head, tears still embarrassingly streaming down my cheeks, but Shiro did not seem convinced. He sat up and guided me onto his lap. He was still fully dressed and I felt so small in his arms, naked and bleeding and hard for him.  

“I’m sorry I hurt you,” he said softly, his lips against my ear.  His voice sounded so soft and genuinely sorry that it calmed me a bit.  My breath was still ragged but I was no longer sobbing. “I couldn’t control myself, not when you are so gorgeous and irresistible.”  He kept whispering sweet praises to me, and it made an entirely different pleasure spread through my chest and limbs. He made me feel glad that he’d drank from me.  

“Did I taste good?” I asked.  

Shiro smiled at me and pressed a kiss to my lips.  “The most amazing I’ve ever tasted. Delicious.” His fingers glided over my skin, finding their way down until they wrapped around my still hard length.  “Should I finish you off? It must be painful right now.” He was right, it was painful. I was so turned on, so ready to burst at the seams, and the slow strokes he was giving me were not nearly enough.  I begged him, telling him I couldn’t stand it any longer, and as always he indulged me. He kissed me while touching me more pointedly, and it did not take long for me to finish. I cried into his shoulder as I came and he told me he was proud.  It took awhile for me to finally calm down, and he held me the whole time. I felt so incredibly safe and satisfied, and when he finally laid me back down in my bed I was ready to drift off to sleep nearly immediately.

“How do you feel, my beloved,” he asked as he draped my covers over me, a parent tucking his child into bed.  I told him the truth. It had felt good, even when he bit me. He apologized for it again. “I didn’t mean to. But you were so lovely.”

“You still want me?” I asked.

“Forever, my darling.  Forever.”

He stayed until I fell asleep.  Things returned to normal after that, or at least as normal as things ever were for us.  No one ever questioned me on the screams that had been coming from my room that night. I’m sure they were too scared or too disgusted to hear the answer.  But as always I paid them no mind. Shiro had told me not to hold the opinions of those so far beneath me very highly, and so I didn’t.

As it drew closer and closer to my eighteenth birthday, Shiro’s gifts became more elegant.  He hired a tailor to come with him one evening to fit me properly for a new suit. It was beautiful.  Black as my hair and with golden accents and long tails. The cufflinks were in the shape of lion heads, and it was finished with a red cravat to match his own silver one.  He began coming to see me every night to put me to bed. We would lay together and talk. He rarely touched me like he did that night. I could feel something coming, as though the relationship we had was going to change soon.  It had to. In only a few short weeks, I would no longer be part of the orphanage, and he would take me home like he’d promised my whole life.

“I’d like you to see my house,” he said one evening as we lay together, my head on his chest as his fingers carded through my hair.  “I can take you to visit, and you can choose if you’d like to change anything about it. It will be your home too.”

I buried my face into his chest and beamed.  My home that I had waited my whole life for was finally being offered to me.  I could have cried, and perhaps I did a bit. It was a grand reward for being so patient for him over the last eight years.  “Will I be able to leave?” I asked. “Your house, when I live there. Will I be kept in like I am here?”

“No, my love,” he assured me and I felt a kiss being pressed to the top of my head.  “You will be free to come and go as you wish.”

That freedom was almost unknown to me.  While the caretaker had brought us into town before, I had never been to the city and I had certainly never been allowed on my own.  I couldn’t even imagine having that sort of authority over myself. It was a thrilling idea. “We don’t have to wait for me to see it,” I insisted, glancing up at his face.  “I am almost of age. You could take me there now.”

Shiro considered that and smiled.  “Would you like to go visit?”

That had not been what I was expecting him to say.  He would so often respond to my insistence with assurance that _one day_ I would get to go with him. It threw me off entirely.  I looked up at him in disbelief, wondering if he was joking, if he would suddenly take the offer back and force me to keep waiting as always.  But he didn’t. He simply met my gaze and there was such honesty in his expression that I could feel tears well in my eyes. “If you let me,” I murmured.  “I’d like that very much.”

Shiro got me dressed again and told me to head downstairs while he informed the servants that he’d be taking me out for the night.  I did as I was told, holding the railing as I walked down the steps slowly, hoping to overhear a bit of what he was saying. I couldn’t make out any of his words, but the servant’s cut harshly through the otherwise silent house.  “You are lucky you are immortal,” she hissed, the venom and loathing in her voice obvious even to my naive ears. “Hell awaits you for what you’ve done to this boy.” I remember the words distinctly. They enraged me at the time. How dare she speak to my father—no, my _lover_ , like that?  What did she think he had done to me that was so terrible?  Shiro had loved me relentlessly for my entire life, more so than anyone else ever had.  I was entirely blind to the possibility that he had not been doing these things for me solely for my happiness.  I was such a child. Such a foolish, naive child. But love is blinding. I do not blame myself for seeing him so infallibly when he was all I had ever known.  The servants had never even tried to tell me that perhaps Shiro wasn’t all he appeared to be. How was I to know?

Shiro didn’t mention the servant as he met up with me at the bottom of the stairs.  I didn’t want him to know that I had been eavesdropping, so I stayed quiet as well. “Come, my love.”  He smiled and offered me his arm, and I took it. “We have a short trip to make.” For the first time since I’d known him, we walked out of the front doors together into the night. Outside stood a carriage more elegant and bigger than any I had seen before.  A beautiful horse stood before it, a harness attaching it to where a driver sat waiting. I was in awe of it and it didn’t occur to me immediately that I would actually get to sit inside of it. “You like it, my love?” Shiro asked although I’m sure he could tell the answer by the look on my face.  

“You have never shown me in all our years how you travel,” I told him, unable to draw my gaze from the horse.  

“If I had known you would be so happy, I would have shown you before.  You never expressed any wish to leave the orphanage other than to go to my home.  I could have taken you to the city if you had liked.”

His words fell like bombs against my ears and suddenly I felt like crying.  My heart ached and my hands began trembling terribly. I had never known that I could ask to leave.  My whole life was spent inside this place when I could have gone places with him. I felt as though I’d wasted so much time.  But Shiro was already stepping forward, not noticing my heartache, and I tried to swallow down the feeling so I could follow him.  I would be owed trips then. I was sure he wouldn’t deny me them once I was free to leave.

As Shiro had said, it was a short trip.  We rode past the edge of the town, nearly impossible to see out of the carriage windows in the dark.  I rested against Shiro’s side, tired but too excited to sleep. I felt as though I were in one of my storybooks, escaping my captivity with my valiant prince who’d saved me.  I think I did sleep a bit, because I don’t remember just how long we were in that carriage, but I was awoken to the sound of Shiro’s voice telling me we were home.

Stepping out of that carriage was like stepping into my fantasies.  For my entire childhood I had imagined where Shiro lived. I had pictured a house bigger than the orphanage, with beautiful gardens and rooms to spare.  I had pictured a grand piano and a dining room big enough to host parties. And finally, my fantasy was proved to be my new reality. His home was gorgeous, more gorgeous than I could have pictured, with stained glass windows surrounding the large wooden door and rows of flowers and trees leading to the front steps.  I didn’t even notice myself crying until Shiro asked if it was everything I had hoped it would be. I nodded, unable to control my tears. He smiled at me and offered me his hand. I took it and he lead me into our home.

Everything was so perfect that I was almost convinced that none of it was real.  I held Shiro’s hand the whole time he showed me his home. _Our_ home.  I didn’t find out until much later, when I was far older, that the house had been created to my design.  Shiro had been listening all the times I would fantasize aloud of where he lived. He’d created the home I always wanted.  I can pretend that he never did anything for me, but I know that I’d be lying to myself. If anything, he did that. He spent years creating it to be perfect.  It was the reason he’d never let me see it before. He told me, years after the first time I stepped foot inside, that he wanted me to live like the prince I deserved to be, in my castle that I had always dreamed of.  I don’t think I’ve ever loved him more than when he told me that.

Shiro gave me a grand tour, showing me each room and insisting I tell him if there was anything I’d like to change.  I couldn’t think of anything. We hadn’t had much at the orphanage. I didn’t even know what I could be asking for. But the house was so perfect, I probably wouldn’t have asked for anything even if I did know.  My room was on the second floor. It had a gorgeous view of the gardens out the window, a full bed draped with curtains, and a grand piano. My very own grand piano.

“Do you like it, my love?” Shiro asked.  I was still in tears. Of course I liked it.  It was a dream come true in every way. I was so beyond happy that I couldn’t find the words to answer him.  I nodded, reaching out a hand to brush my fingers over the ivory keys. “Is there anything you’d like to change?”

“May I try the piano?” I asked, pressing down so one long note filled the room.  

Shiro smiled and nodded.  “Of course, it is yours. I am sure you’ll enjoy it.”

I sat down on the bench which was much more comfortable than the one at the orphanage and placed my finger atop the keys.  They were firm, more so than the worn down keys of the orphanage’s piano. It sang beautifully as I played and for a few moments I lost myself in it.  Shiro didn’t interrupt me as my fingers moved across the keys, letting me indulge myself, and when I had finished I could barely see through the tears in my eyes.  I felt so lucky. I had done nothing to deserve all that he was giving me. I wanted to return the favor somehow, but all I had to give him was myself. Somehow that didn’t seem like enough.

“If you don’t like it, we can always buy another,” Shiro offered, but I shook my head.  He smiled. “Come, my dear.” He lead me to a second door in my room and opened it for me.  “This leads into my own room. I had considered having us share one, but I thought maybe you would like some privacy.”

I stared into the other room.  It was too dark to properly see, but I could make out the outline of another bed.  “Does that mean I cannot sleep with you?” I asked. I had assumed I would be, that once we lived together it would be as if we were married.  I didn’t mind the idea of having a room to myself but it did make me feel a bit sad.

Shiro let out a soft laugh at my question and I looked up at him curiously.  He was still looking into his room. “You’ll hardly be asleep when I sleep, but you’re always welcome in my room.  And during the night I could come to lay with you while you rest.”

The statement confused me.  I had come to know over the years and from my storybooks that Shiro and his kind could not go out in the light, that they arose at night to explore the world in the darkness.  And of course, that meant I would too. “Won’t I sleep at the same time as you once you turn me?” I asked, wondering if I had learned wrong.

“Once I turn you, yes,” he answered, putting a hand on my shoulder.  “I need to talk with you about that, Keith. I want you to live for a while longer.  I don’t want you to want to become a vampire because you think that’s what you need to start actually living.”

The words made ice drop into my stomach.  Perhaps it was wrong of me to have assumed that moving in with him had meant that I would be turned as well, but that is what I had been lead to believe for years.  I could practically hear his words promising me that _soon_ I’d be like him.  Empty promises, as always.  I took a step away from him, the hurt no doubt obvious on my face.  I was never good at hiding my emotions as a human. “You keep telling me I have to wait,” I shot at him.  “I don’t want to wait anymore! I’m ready for it!”

“Move here,” Shiro insisted.  From his tone it was obvious that he knew I would react badly to that news.  He stepped towards me and I crossed my arms over my chest, pouting like the spoiled child I was.  He circled me until he was standing behind me, wrapping his arms around my waist and kissing at my neck.  “Let me enjoy you while your skin is still warm and human.” I did not respond other than to look down at the floor.  He kissed me again and I tried my best to ignore it. He sighed. “What is it, my love?”

“You have made me wait my whole life,” I explained, my voice shaking.  I felt betrayed by him. “I am starting to think you’ll continue making promises to me you’ll never keep.”

Shiro’s grip around my waist tightened and I huffed, halfheartedly fighting to get away.  “That is not true,” he insisted. “I said you’ll move in with me and that one day you would be like me.  And you will.” He kissed me again and I gave up my struggle. “I do not see why you are so eager to be changed.”

I tipped my head back to look up at him, glaring at the smile he looked back at me with.  “I want to be beautiful and powerful like you. I want to be rid of fowl humans for good.”

“You are already so beautiful and so powerful.”  As if to prove his point, Shiro let go and stepped in front of me again.  He lowered himself onto one knee, reaching to take my hand and pressing a kiss to it.  I looked away. “You could bring me to my knees with just a finger.” When that did not win me over me, he sighed.  “I will turn you if that is what you truly desire… But please, I just want you to give me a couple months.”

I begrudgingly gave in at that.  Not only did seeing Shiro on his knees for me satisfy me immensely, I supposed I did owe him.  He was giving me everything my heart had ever wanted. Even my spoiled self could see that. “For my nineteenth birthday?” I offered as a compromise.  It was further off than just a couple months but if it meant that much to him, I could wait. “But you owe me,” I added.

My answer seemed to please him because a moment later I was hoisted off the ground and into his arms.  “I owe you?” he laughed, carrying me to my new bed and laying me down on it. He was beside me a moment later, face to face with our heads on the pillow.  I rolled away to continue my pouting. “You have such a tempter.” He wrapped an arm around my waist and pressed himself to my back. I reluctantly leaned into him.  No matter how angry or frustrated I ever got with him, I could never stop myself from melting in his arms.

“You are the one who chose me,” I reminded him.  “You did not have to pick someone so temperamental.”

Shiro hummed, nuzzling his face into the back of my neck, and I sighed.  Despite how long I had known him, the intimacy we had then still came as a surprise to me each time he initiated it.  It was still new for us, even if it had been over a year since he confessed his desires for me. It took me quite a while to become accustomed to it.  “Oh, but I love that tempter,” Shiro breathed, his voice low and in my ear, sweet and enchanting as it always was. “I love how spoiled you are already.  But tell me, what do I owe you, your highness?”

“You plan to spoil me more?”

“Yes, of course.” Shiro pressed a kiss to my shoulder and I finally rolled back to face him.  He wore a tender smile as he looked at me, his perfect skin practically glowing in the dim light of the room.  God, he was beautiful. He is beautiful. I can fault him on many things but his beauty is not one of them. “Tell me what you want and you shall receive it.”

I considered my options.  I suppose he expected me to ask for something from him, perhaps for him to touch me again like he hadn't done since that time in my small bedroom at the orphanage.  But I had the chance now to ask for anything, I wasn't going to waste it on something I knew he'd give me anyway. I raised a hand to cup his cheek, my fingers dancing on his cold skin.  “I want a carriage,” I told him, tracing down his jawline to his neck. “For when I go into the city while you sleep.”

He hummed in consideration but I knew he wouldn’t deny me.  He never did when it came to gifts. I looked at him with my eyes purposefully wide and a small, practiced pout on my lips.  If anything, it made him concede faster. “I suppose I can give you that.” He fit an almost sad look onto his face. “You plan to leave me so soon, my beloved?”

I laughed and he pressed a kiss to my lips to quiet me.  It only made me laugh louder, scooting closer to him and running a hand through his dark hair.  “What do you expect me to do while you sleep?” I asked him. My irritation with him had been thoroughly quelled.  He had that sort of power over me. I never managed to stay upset with him for long, even during times that perhaps I still should not have forgiven him for.  But at that moment, I did not think about how quickly I had become docile again. I was happy to be laying beside him, both touching each other gently and kindly.  The moments we had like that are very precious to me. “You want me to sit and watch you?”

“Yes,” he answered so easily, his lips pressing light, playful kisses across my cheek and to my neck.  “I expect you to lay beside me and look pretty while I rest.” But a moment after, he laughed and I could feel him shaking his head.  “I’m teasing you, my love. You are free to come and go as you please during the day. All I ask is that when you go, you take one of the servants with you so that you do not get lost.”

“Servants?” I said, surprised, although it should have occurred to me sooner that this mansion couldn’t have been run by Shiro alone.  He wasn’t the type. “How many do you have?” I asked. It was exciting to me. While I had grown up in the orphanage with servants who would dress and feed us, it felt a bit different in our own home.  

Shiro kissed his way back to my lips, and we paused for a moment to indulge in it.  His lips, as always, were cold but incredibly soft. I would have forgotten the conversation entirely if I was able to keep kissing him instead, but Shiro, unfortunately, decided to continue it.  “I have about thirty in total: cooks, maids, gardeners, a tailor. I was thinking of hiring a music teacher for you as well.”

“I would like that.”  I kissed him again before pushing him onto his back so that I could lay on top of him.  I tucked my head under his chin. For the first time in my life, I truly felt at home. He provided me so much comfort, made me feel so safe.  His arms wrapped around me and held me tightly to him. I have heard people say that there is nothing quite like the embrace of your parent. That when a mother holds her child in her arms, there is no safer place in the world.  I have never felt the embrace of a mother, but I can believe it is true. It is how I felt about the embrace of my father. “We could learn a piece together,” I breathed. I had never seen him play the piano before but he had told me he did.  It was something I’d never asked about before. I had never really thought to.

“I can find a piece for us,” he whispered.  The room was so quiet around us, save for the sound of the bugs singing outside in the dark. “If that is what you’d like.”

“Did you choose me because of the piano?” I asked.  It had always been my assumption, considering the first time he ever spoke to me was when I had been playing it.  Although, at the time my skill was undeveloped and sloppy, and I’m not sure how that alone could have piqued anyone’s interest.  Especially someone who had lived as long as he had and had probably heard much better pianists.

He didn’t speak to answer my question right away, instead letting the thought hang in the air between us long enough to make me start to fully question my belief.  I am convinced that he could read the thoughts racing through my head because as soon as I had reached the conclusion that the piano could not have been the reason, he spoke.  “I chose you because you look like someone I used to know.” I blinked at that, pulling my head out from under his chin to look at him. “At first it was that,” he continued, looking up at me with a doleful expression that made my heart melt into putty in my chest.  “But you are not like her. Everything you do, everything you _are_ , is different.  And it made me want you that much more.”

He so rarely spoke to me about his past that it was almost surprising to hear that he’d had people in his life to be reminded of.  I supposed it was partially a product of my own childhood. I’d grown up without anyone except for him, and it has narrowed my thinking.  Shiro had an entire life I knew almost nothing about. And so, I asked him about it, about who I reminded him of, if she was someone special to him.  He told me that she had been someone he knew a long time ago, from his mortal life. I asked him to tell me more, incredibly curious to know more about him, but he insisted that there was not much to tell. Withholding, as always.  But he knew better than to think that it would quiet me entirely.

I asked how long it had been since he’d been mortal, and he told me it had been about two hundred years.  For some reason, it made me laugh. Perhaps it was because while I knew he was telling me the truth, the idea of him being alive so long seemed absurd.  And then, amidst my own amusement at the idea, Shiro’s own words came to my mind.

“Aren’t I a little young for you?” I asked, a mischievous grin crossing my face.

I was met with an exasperated laugh and Shiro shaking his head at my antics.  My grin only widened and I leaned in to press a kiss to his lips. “I keep telling you that,” he pointed out as our lips pressed together.  I kissed him harder to try and quiet him the same way he quieted me, but just as I had, he laughed. “Although,” he continued, cupping my cheek to pull me away from the kiss gently so he could speak.  “I became immortal at twenty nine.”

“Still an old man.”  I fought his pull to kiss him again.  “Old enough to be my father.”

It was the first time I had said the word aloud to him. I am not sure why, but up until that point, I had been worried that it may have bothered him.  That he may have thought I was being too needy of a child, ungrateful for what he was already giving me. So when the word left my mouth, my hands began to shake and my heart raced.  But Shiro did not react other than to smile.

“I sort of am, aren’t I?  I raised you,” he said in a gentle voice that shook me down to my core.  The shaking in my hands only worsened and my chest may as well have been on fire.  He caressed his thumb over my cheek, wiping away a stray tear that had fallen from my eye without my knowledge.  The atmosphere has dramatically changed over the course of only a few moments, a few words. I hadn’t realized just how hard it would hit me when Shiro agreed with me.  And perhaps it was sick of me to still think of him that way after knowing what I did. Perhaps I’m still sick in the head for even now still seeing him as my father. But I can’t deny that is what he is to me.  And he always will be.

I took a deep breath, trying to regain myself and stop the insistent tears that were still sliding down my face.  “Well,” I breathed, fixing my grin back onto my face as best as I could. “If you are my father, you’re not a very good one. You never took me home with you.”

Shiro laughed, and as I looked down at his face and his smile, I couldn’t help but fall in love with him even more, in every way one person can love another.  “I think,” he began, and tucked a bit of my hair behind my ear. “I prefer you as my lover.”

I didn’t quite agree, although I nodded and let him pull me down into another kiss.  

I preferred him as both.  



End file.
